First let me say great work Michael in updating the shield, as a BGScript user I love the pin breakouts for the BLE112. Nicely done!

Just two suggestions:

1) The new interrupt feature is great, but the very popular (low cost) Arduino Leonardo shares D2 and D3 with I2C (SDA and SCL respectively). It's possible users will run into a conflict there if they don't cut both lines. The best alternative when using I2C on the Leonardo is D7 which triggers INT4.

Could you not just use a jumper too, perhaps in a different colour? Maybe that way we could even patch the interrupt to any of pins using a short F-F jumper cable?

2) More of "I wish" request than a suggestion since it's an extensive redesign, but I'd like an ICSP/SPI passthrough… Maybe for BLE Shield v3?

Thanks again for your dedication and creating all these nice tools that let our inspiration go wild

Hi Jose,
thanks for hinting. I think another jumper block for the interrupt can be done.
Can you give me a link to a resource/description where pin 7 is mentioned to be used as int4?

I just want to test this out a little bit.

Adding an ICSP/SPI passthrough is a good idea and can be done, but I have to move the BLE112 module from the right to the left, since the ICSP header
is directly underneath the BLE112. I will try to make a new design and share the 3D model here in the forum.

Cheers,
Michael.

Sure, you can see the mapping between INT and pins for different boards on the attachInterrupt function page on
the Arduino site.

http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/AttachInterrupt

I think this Leonardo pin 7 was a new feature, maybe from 1.0.4.

The SPI passthrough would be really great if you could fit it in, so many shields use it like almost all displays and NFC.

Hell Jose,
I just finished Rev C of the BLE-Shield v2.0.0. The interrupt pins are now changed as you were proposing.
The Shield is not passing through all Leonardo pins as well including the ICSP header.

I'll try to build this prototype now and test before I will do a private beta for the new Shield.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Michael.

Hi Michael,

Nice work, very impressed! That ticks my whole checklist

I printed it out roughly to scale and tried it with my shield collection and it should work fine with all. Only doubt is if the serial selection pin headers don't clash into the Pololu's Zumo Robot shield's headers (the shields plug upside down into it). It's looks OK but clearance is small - will have to confirm that with the real layout. In any a case it's nothing that can't be easily worked around.

Now we just need some cool firmware for it. Something that highlights the BLE112's advantages compared to the nRF-based RFduinos and BLEduinos that are coming soon to the market.
Perhaps something using the dual central/peripheral roles supported by the BLE112 which none of the nRFs can do.

Hello Jose,
yes, the firmware needs some additional features, but we can start to brainstorm.
Currently the functionality is somewhat improved, even easier than the BLE-Shield v1.0.0 firmware to use.
There is still no Library and it will not in the future

Well one feature would be to use the BGLib provided by Jeff Rowberg instead of the firmware I created.
This would give you the chance to interact as you want with the Shield, but make a Library necessary.

It would be good if we could brainstorm a little bit.

Peripheral and central role would be great to support

Cheers,
Michael.